/dcg/ Dropzone/Dropfleet Commander General

Bombers stack though, so 2 Bellerophons 8 bombers attack together against 1 set of PD rolls and most frigates can't enter atmosphere.

Ships in atmosphere can only target things in scan range and only move 2 inches, so that is a short ranged force.

This.

That said, speed in Atmos is down to 2", so at some point you're going to have to come up for air.

Well, maybe not, the Charybdis can just sit there and murder your carriers with escape velocity weapons and you can't go too far from them or else they can pop up, zoom away and pop down... wait how many times can you change altitude in a turn?

UCM definitely need to ping those PHR Carriers before they get into bomber range (24") and give them THE LAZOR though.
Not sure what Scourge counters are, short of using their speed to get into close combat before they can be engaged, or spamming their own fighters to counter.
I suspect PHR are going to want (if I'm right about how this works) the highest ranked commander they can to win the Launch Assets phase as much as possible.

any video tutorials of assembling/magnetizing/painting the minis yet?

>Ships in atmosphere can only target things in scan range and only move 2 inches, so that is a short ranged force.

Yeah, but as said, so are 12" range bombers.

I've been wondering that too. I'm assuming the lock is the same, but the Madrid fires fewer shots. Just because, generally with Dave, weapons that look the same have the same lock/damage/special rules.

Maybe just the one bank of 5 shots?

That would make sense, yeah.

So as a note I would emphasize you can just combine bomber waves and they're pretty obviously better at focusing one target down.

This also isn't a love letter to PHR carrier spam so don't worry.

But anyway, 4 PHR bombers will be 4 crits and 2.66 hits (which against a 3+ save will be a little less than 1 damage). A pretty decent PD of 10 will get 3.33 PD hits, and so can nullify around 1 and a half of those crits.

It'll still do around 3.5 damage total which is less than a moscow going weapons free but also happens to be F/S/R at a reliable range.

a PD of 10 either has a jakarta, fighters or its a BB. A typical cruiser will have less even at full health.

I feel that normal bombers are much easier to handle with PD just considering that you're going to get 2/3 crits and 2/3 hits rather than 1 crit and 2/3rd hits. That sounds trivial but graphed against PD its a pretty significant difference.

For example, 4 normal bombers will be doing 2.66 crits and 2.66 hits, where 10 PD can clear 1.5 of those crits and those 2.66 hits will be saved down to .88 damage, leading to about 2 overall damage on average. That's a loss of 43%.

I think the main fleet that may have trouble against heavy carriers will be scourge, UCM should have enough PD and hull points around to survive 3-4 turns of constant bombers to take the fight to the fairly undefended carriers and Shaltari shields can save against crits from the PHR bombers.

PHR themselves have a rough time against bombers, their point defence is pretty bad, the scald of scourge bombers can do some work to PHR ships

I think the Scourge can field a decent launch force. 3 Hydras are 420 points, hit the launch cap for a clash and can all be in one line battlegroup. Their bombers hit on 3's but they do have scald.

One bank of 6, same lock value, but the Madrid is only 79 points.

Are Hydras launch 4 or launch 5?

As posted before, even with 10 PD you're going to be taking about as much as if I had just shot you with a good cruisers worth of guns. This is in addition to the cobra laser that the bellaphron has, making the actual projected damage of the heavy cruiser somewhere between 6-9 on average (because BTLs are wild as fuck) which handily out damages any other ship of its points cost.

I would be curious as to see how many jakartas people actually bring, as I'm not sure how much more points effective they are than just using fighters, considering that a carrier deploying fighters can be much further from harm than a jakarta hoping to tank bombers.

And speaking of fighters, PHR fighters are a nice little bonus and I think are understated since they're so easily proliferated by escort carriers.

Scourge bombers also have a little bit of extra range. And every inch counts when you're doubling/tripling it for attacks in future turns.

It's also worth pointing out that not only does PHR have the best bombers, but they also have the best spread of Launch capable ships as well.
Not just the Frigate (although those are nice auxiliary support) but also the Icarus and the Bellerophon and the Scipio.
On the other hand they're the only fleet to lack a Carrier variant Battleship.
So at Skirmisha and Battle (more the former than the latter), PHR have an advantage in being more easily able to hit that Launch Assets cap than their opponents, and they can make better use of it thanks to better bombers.
But at Battle then you start seeing multiple BB Carriers and enough tonnage on the board that not even all of the bombers will make a quick enough work of, and bunching all your carriers together certainly isn't going to be logistically feasible unless you embark on some very restrictive maneouvers that might end badly for you after an unlucky roll on the Catasrophic Damage chart... which as we pointed out last thread ALL OF YOUR FRIGATES ROLL ON.

But at Skirmish, you can fit a Scipio and a Bell into a single vanguard squadron for 390 points, then fill out the rest with a mothership and some strike carriers and maybe a pair of cruisers. You'll be relying on your Bombers to do the heavy lifting sure, but those bombers are going to be obnoxious for anything that can't go atmospheric to deal with.

PHR ship-side pd is the same or better than UCM though excepting light cruisers and while they don't have Jakartas their fighters add 4 pd each so I wouldn't call it bad.

Hydra's have 5.

Is everyone raving about the PHR bombers simply because they have a lock value of 2+ instead of 3+? Is it really that big of a difference?

>Is everyone raving about the PHR bombers simply because they have a lock value of 2+ instead of 3+? Is it really that big of a difference?
Very much so; They only have a 1/6 chance for each attack to miss, a 1/3 chance for each attack to hit, and a 1/2 chance for each chance to crit.
Statistically, each flight of bombers from a Bell will be doing 4 damage, since we're assuming that damage from normal hits will be less than 1 and negligible due to armor.

This is why PD is so important.

Here's a comparison that I think is appropriate

The ajax is your Phobos. Its mandatory to take and its pretty good at its job, a job that the game dictates is quite necessary.

The Scipio/Leonidas are your type 2 walkers. They hit like fucking trucks, they get in the brawl and they're pretty good at it.

The BB's are obviously Type 4 walkers. They're uniquely strong in the game.

Now the bellepheron is your Thor bombard. Its long range as fuck and has a gigantic damage capacity. Its a support ship pure and simple but if its allowed to just hang out in the back it'll fuck something up badly.

Yes, a 2+ vs a 3+ means a PHR bomber crits on a 4+ instead of a 5+ and criticals take 2 point defense hits to negate instead of 1. Its a deceptively small rules change that as I autistically demonstrated here , can in some cases nearly double the amount of damage those bombers can do.

that (50% crit chance rather than 35%) and ease of access, they are great but I feel some ppl are panicking too much about them

has to do with crits, and so forth, so yes it is, every up or down 1 on a D6 is about 16% probability change

I don't think people are panicking, I think it's more PHR players getting all smug about how great their bombers are.

I just wish the bomberfags weren't so mean about the Orion/Hector, since I think they're actually some of the best looking ships in the PHR fleet

also I was too busy being a smug faggot about my bombers to see that Hector points cost: what a bunch of crap, bottom of the barrel. It's good in the starter fleet fights because I don't have to pay for it

Ajax, Odeus and Bellephron are pure sex to me

>Hydra's have 5.

Savage. That pretty much makes the UCM the worst by a country mile at Launch Assets. Since they're only just about the same in quality as the Scourge ones. I'm almost terrified to ask what the Demon gets.

Do not bully the Hector!

on a side note about bombers, if you are firing them over their range, they have to travel a turn or two. if you have assets chasing you in this way you can shake them off with a course change or max thrust special order, doing so you roll d6 for every asset chasing and on a 4+ it is removed, you can only do this on a 6+ to a torp but all it does is delay the torp 1 turn

you can also drive through debris if you want to clear them, you risk some damage but can shake a few of the bombers of your tail

>on a side note about bombers, if you are firing them over their range, they have to travel a turn or two.
Is their range the thrust value listed, or is it double the thrust value?

>if you have assets chasing you in this way you can shake them off with a course change or max thrust special order, doing so you roll d6 for every asset chasing and on a 4+ it is removed
Nice, glad to see there's a third layer of defense against bombers.

You misspelt Achilles there somewhere. That tiny torpedo, just sitting there, not doing anything, you know it's going to be good!

I mean sure, statwise it's MONSTROUSLY overspecialised, but it looks cool!

Previously Dave said the Platinum had the highest launch capacity in the game at 9. That's obviously changed, but I think we can be confident the Dragon has a capacity of less that 9, for whatever reassurance that is.

I also keep thinking the Demon is the carrier one and the Dragon is the guns one. I really don't know why.

the thrust value is their range
so 12" for UCM and PHR 15 for scourge and shaltari

I'm guessing the Daemon is going to be a launch value of 6, since that's the only place it can fit between the New York and the Platinum.

Neat, for some reason I thought their range was double their thrust for the first turn.

So if a PHR bomber wants to get something sitting 36" inches away (and somehow staying in position), it'll have to take 3 turns to get there?

They're not really getting smug. It's more that broadsides are underwhelming so bombers are the clear build.

I would much prefer to be shooting lots of guns, but... the broadsides simply aren't very good.

I know, it's complete crap. Overpriced as fuck.

Which is a shame because it's one of the coolest looking ships in the fleet.

Yeah, so looking at the model it doesn't seem to have any "jaw" guns at all, so I'm thinking that the Hydra literally just has that 5 Launch capacity and a single 2 shot Occulus Array as it's entire loadout. It's a pure carrier.
Compared to say the UCM's carriers which are really multirole vessels that just happen to have launch capacity as an afterthought.
Which, now that I think about it, is very UCM isn't it? They don't have the manpower to waste them on attrition based fighter tactics like the Scourge can.

Our new meme is the Moth signal

>Overpriced as fuck
It's about as expensive as any other heavy gun cruiser with comparable weaponry; it's exactly the same cost as the Shenlong (assuming that Wayland is correct), and has equivalent damage output just from its broadsides outside of scald range. It's burnthrough puts it on parity with the stealth.

Occulus beams are actually single shot, 2 damage, but otherwise everything else is totally correct.

I think the hydra is even more of a pure carrier than that, if I remember correctly the scourge ships outside the yokai/sphinx/shenlong triad are just 1 single shot with 2 damage. A single harpy frigate puts out the same shooting as a hydra carrier or chimera mothership or whatever.

I assume the raiju has the 2 shot array though, given its got the same crest as the shenlong. But you're taking the raiju for its burnthroughs, the guns are a bonus.

Wait, does the starter fleet only come with the sprues to build the exact ships shown?

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Ugh. I'm now really torn with what to make my fifth Scourge cruiser into. I was going to go with a Ifrit because I really like how multi functional the Furnace Cannons are, and I can upgrade to a Raiju when needed, but 5 Launch capacity sounds really good as well.

Plus, unlike the Manticore-Basilisk, it's not just a simple jaw component swap, it's a jaw and wing swap.

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No you can build whatever you want, there's just a recommended starter ship pamphlet and people are playing those against each other

That's not bad at all really. It's firepower is no worse than a Moscow in broadsides, whilst from the front and weapons free it's actually a fair bit more deadly.

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The issue is that it's weaponry is pretty evenly split in three seperate arcs with zero overlap and it's fucking expensive on top of it. An Orion and two pandoras would cost a little more but at least you could aim all the guns at one ship

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>49612346

It's not really that bad, H+S are looking to be making up quite a few ships in the average fleet and it'll be nice to be able to reliably plink those heavy ships. They thankfully seem to have given heavy and light guns quite the discount, considering the Ajax is 70 less points than a Hector for having one less BTL.

And yes the super cheap torpedo helps a lot.

That's kind of the point of broadsides, user. Complaining that you can't hit one target with both broadsides, and that you have to maneuver to get maximum overall damage, is like complaining that BTLs are a narrow arc and that they can't shoot at anything you want them to.

I am fully expecting PHR broadsides to be excellent if admirals can actually pull off the maneuvering needed.

I feel like I'm going to run a scourge cruiser into that thing thinking I'll eat it in CA attacks, only to get fucking rocked by the Aura, harpoon cascade and disintegrator battery. That's what, a minimum of 11 shots close in, and you don't even need to go weapons free since they're all CA weapons except for one?

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Now that I think of it, with a scan range of 12" that effectively makes Shaltari CAW double the range of most other CAW's doesn't it?

The Basalt for instance has a potential threat range of 22" with those CAWs, that's pretty damn nasty, and that's all round coverage as well.

Except it's broadsides are equivalent to a normal cruisers. They're not better in any way. It costs 70% more than its identical ship for having a few more hull and a BTL.

The Leonidas on the other hand is a ravenous beast of a broadsides ship and will be excellent at what it does for less than a corvette more in price.

I think a group of Orions is actually a good idea.

Don't even go for the big weapons free at first. Circle around the edges, using your superior range and ability to fire 8 shots per ship without going weapons free to focus down ships without taking much appreciable return fire.

>They're not better in any way. It costs 70% more than its identical ship for having a few more hull and a BTL.

>each Pandora is about 40 points, each with a single supernova laser
>Hector gets two of these for 63 points, along with two more hull points
Seems fair to me.

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Yeah, this is my problem with it. The difference between a Moscow and a Rio is huge, but the Hector is barely better than am Orion despite its cost. I don't think Orions are that bad in teams, but an Orion + 1 extra hull and a better forward gun is NOT worth like 70 extra points.

I'm hoping Hawk notice how defunct a lot of PHR stuff seems to be and release an early errata.

so for 15 points you get
>2 hull
>3 PD
all the launch capacity for troops you will probably need
>lose 2 inches of thrust
I'm not sure how often I'd want to bring Azurites unless I really want to group them up.

Instead of comparing a Hector to the Orion, you should instead be thinking about how the Orion has heavy cruiser level firepower.
Instead of thinking of the Hector in terms of PHR cruisers, you should be comparing it to other faction's heavy cruisers.

For example, on the average, the Hector's (and Orion's) combined broadsides are equivalent to all of the Moscow's turrets doing weapons free, and the Hector in addition gets a prow burnthrough laser.

You know what, feel free to try it. Be the guy who runs Ares, menchits and Hyperions. Just own it and don't complain.

Orion pairs are growing on me (which is to say I don't think they're unplayable garbage anymore) but man, Ajax are sweet. Nice and specialized and with a little kick on the closing vector.

And if the Perseus ends up being like 80 points I'll eat my hat and take one. Considering how cheap light and heavy broadsides ended up being, that's not ridiculous.

Do PHR really only have one LC though? I would love a supernova equipped LC

Pandoras aren't just paying for the laser. They're a whole ship. Five HP, a bunch of PD, frigate thrust, etc.

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Okay, maths. Against Armor 3+ various BTL's average the following amount of damage :

Supernova Laser : 1.086

Cobra Heavy Laser : 2.716

Viper Super-Heavy Laser : 5.18

>You know what, feel free to try it. Be the guy who runs Ares, menchits and Hyperions. Just own it and don't complain.
You know it, baby; I'll be sure to report how well or poorly I do here.
If they do end up being utter shit, kudos to you.

How'd you do the math for it?

The Hector went up points so it is doubtful.

On paper its weapons seem to stack up with the Avalon. It is the only way to get a UCM power level laser, which has the advantage of being able to generate more critical hits than a Pandora combo.

I don't think it is that overpriced. Especially if the broadside stuff turns out to be better than it looks.

I am comparing it to other faction's heavies. The Hector is far less effective than the Moscow or the Petersburg. It gets way less out of the bulk up to a heavy chassis.

The Hector will almost never be in a position to fire its BLT and broadsides, no matter how good you are at positioning. On approach it's a less effective Berlin. Once lines meet it's an overpriced Orion. The huge point cost is not worth that.

It's garbage, dude.

That can be both a plus and minus. A frigate is easy to eat with a single BTL.

A few shots in and your weapons start disappearing where as the hector could be at standoff and just plink away at spiked ships with its laser.

Uh, the Bell has a UCM level laser.

Really, the Hector is just in an awkward place.

It wants to get close to fire its broadsides, but once it gets really close the chances of it shooting its BLT are super low. It seems like it will almost always be running at half efficiency.

On the other hand, the Bellerophon can sit back and zap shit while sending horrible rapist bombers to ruin people's day.

>The Hector is far less effective than the Moscow or the Petersburg
If you're only taking one of its arcs, maybe.

>The Hector will almost never be in a position to fire its BLT and broadsides
And when it is, it will make up for its points cost.

>On approach it's a less effective Berlin
It's EXACTLY as effective as the Cairo, Berlin, or St. Pete on approach.

>Once lines meet it's an overpriced Orion
With the opportunity to fire its BTL into the backfield if the opportunity presents itself, along with it being available as it swings around in the middle.

>The huge point cost is not worth that.
Maybe if you're insistent on using it ineffectually.

>It's garbage, dude.
We'll see, but I adamantly disagree.

>a Hector can do cruisers damage across in three arcs while a Moscow can just do two cruisers worth of damage in one arc on one ship

You're not making a convincing argument here. Especially when you can just take a Leonidas instead or two Ajax for way more firepower at a very modest price increase.

The Hector at 150 would be viable I think.

You could have stopped this

>only way to get a UCM laser

Bellephron

>stacks up with the Avalon

I'll spoil you on the math, the broadsides will do 2.5 damage in each arc and the BTL will do around 2.7 for around 7.7 damage total if there's a target in each arc.

Also keep in mind you can't turn when you go weapons free, so it has to have its F(N) lined up ahead of time plus have a target already in its left and right arcs.
The Avalon can do 5.18 + 2.5 = 7.68 in its front arc on one ship. It doesn't stack up at all, the Avalon will win the fight every time.

Im not even shitting on broadsides here, the Leonidas is a wonderful ship for doing the gameplay you're thinking of. It puts out fucking 3.83 damage per arc for a total of 7.68 and it's much better at getting close to do it

So the sig 3" frigates are getting popped at long range but the sig 6" heavy cruiser is going to be unmolested.

Bleh. The long way. I couldn't find a way to formula it out for more than one shot. So I just sucked it up and made a spreadsheet.

I feel like you're afraid of having specialized ships that are good at their jobs which sadly is PHRs entire design philosophy

>A hector can do a (PHR) cruisers worth of damage + a beam in three arcs, while a Moscow is a cruiser and a light cruiser worth of damage
You're comparing apples to oranges, user.

>The Hector at 150 would be viable I think.
I wouldn't go that low, having it sit at 160 or 165 with the Achilles would be better.

>You could have stopped this
Het, I won't admit that I'm wrong until RNGesus himself forces the truth into my head.

No, I just really like the design of the Hector, want it to be viable, and don't think that it's as bad as everyone is saying it is. Broadsides also look more fun than carrier spam.

It's sad because an Orion + two Europas will absolutely shit on things with their broadsides for about the same cost as a Hector or an Ajax plus a few pandoras can poke pretty efficiently for around the same cost.

People need to get away from thinking about ships and think more of battlegroups.

I actually think the Orion is fine, it's just that the Ikarus is better in every way.

It's even better at broadsiding. Going weapons free an Orion will be shooting 8 lock 4 shots on either side. Cool. The Ikarus will spit out 4 lock 4 shots and effectively 4 lock 2 shots on each side, and the lock 2 can be focused either way for maximum efficiency. Plus they can hit things out of scan range in the early turns, even if they're silent running.

if you wanted to save some time, ive got a table with all the numbers

I think it's a slick looking ship but it's unspecialized enough to not be all that hot for its points cost.

It's why the Perseus isn't a super great looking pick either (unless it turns out to be super cheap)

The Achilles on the other hand I think is a perfectly viable ship for its point cost.

They laughed until I did 14 medium shots per broadside into their unsculpted baseline asses. 3.83 damage per broadside altogether for less than a Leonidas.

What kind of formulas do you have going there? I couldn't figure anything out for the 2-4 shot BTL's. The damage cap's influence on the final value kept throwing me off.

I actually wrote a c++ console application to run everything -- its a little over-complicated the way it does things since I had it originally setup to calculate individual "dice-lines" the way BTL's used to work
If you want I can post my code up and you can see how my formulas work -- hell ill prolly through it on github and that way anyone who wants to can run the program for any given BTL they want (real or imaginary)

>clearly has three bombardment guns
>only two shots
dave...

whatcha mean user? It's got 10 shots!

Was looking at the damage column.
Still, the number of profiles and the number of shots are multiples of 2, not 3. Seems weird.

I suppose it's just so that you can spread bombardment over multiple sectors?

based on posting in the thread and guesswork, its supposed to be 2 madrids glued together. Lets you hit 2 sectors, as you noted.

Where is a good place to buy DZC/DFC models in the US?